Resisting the Apocalypse: Telling Time in American Novels about AIDS, 1982-1992

(Doctoral Dissertation by Lisa Garmire, UCSB 1996)

CHAPTER TWO: THE APOCALYPTIC AIDS NOVEL: FACING IT: A NOVEL OF AIDS

He [Andy Stone] realized that now the diagnosis was given, he had something to which to concede his health, his life probably. There was in it - though he remained filled with confusion - a slight blessing; the unknown would soon cease to instill fear.

                                                                                --Facing It: a Novel of AIDS

2.1 Introduction

       This chapter defines what I mean by an "apocalyptic AIDS novel," by conducting a detailed analysis of Paul Reed's novel, Facing It: a Novel of AIDS. This chapter also demonstrates the pervasiveness of this apocalyptic narrative representation of AIDS in the different kinds of AIDS novels by extensively referencing the Annotated Bibliography, which can be found at the end of the Dissertation and which groups novels about AIDS into five general categories.    

       Reed's novel was the first primary AIDS novel published in the United States.[1] By "primary AIDS novel," I mean a novel in which AIDS plays a central role in the narrative and which can be distinguished from several other categories of AIDS novels (please see the Annotated Bibliography for a definition of these five general categories). Though Reed's novel has been considered somewhat didactic and awkward in its execution by critics, it is important for several reasons.[2] First, it marks the historical emergence of a new literary tradition, novels about AIDS, and secondly, the structure of its narrative illustrates a paradigm for representing AIDS to which many subsequent novels about AIDS conform.[3]

2.2.1 The Problems and Possibilities of Paradigm Formation

       Before turning to Reed's novel, there are several things that need to be said in general about the problems and possibilities associated with the formation of a paradigm to describe the narratives of novels about AIDS.[4] To define our terms, we could say that a paradigm is the establishment of a general model (or type) by which to describe a group of things. A narrative paradigm for novels about AIDS, then, is a particular narrative structure that generally describes a large number of AIDS novels. The most obvious problem with such a paradigm is that it may mute, or even worse, erase the particularities of a specific novel to fit general criteria. A related problem is that to blindly apply a paradigm to a group of novels without respect to the dynamic and changing cultural and historical contexts in which the novels were written may prevent the literary scholar from seeing how the paradigm itself may shift and change when adopted by different people and through time.[5] On the positive side, however, if a scholar has read a great many texts and begins to see particular trends in how the novels treat a subject such as AIDS, the formation of a paradigm may help the scholar better understand and describe the issues at stake in the novels. With respect to novels about AIDS, we can see a repetitive pattern in the narrative structure of a great many of the novels and, for lack of a better phrase, we can call it an "apocalyptic narrative paradigm."

2.2.2 The Apocalyptic Narrative Paradigm of AIDS

       In using the term "apocalyptic," I do not allude to the Christian view of the Apocalypse, which mitigates the destructiveness of the Apocalypse by the promise of eternal salvation for the Chosen. Rather, I draw from the work of scholars like Frank Kermode and Richard Dellamora, who argue that the idea of apocalypse plays an important part in how people make sense of their lives, and which is reflected in their literature. Kermode's The Sense of an Ending illustrates how important a role the notion of the End is in the history of the Judeo-Christian world for making sense of life in time, or as he puts it,  "life in the middest," and Dellamora's recent book, Apocalyptic Overtures, extends the implications of apocalyptic rhetoric to describe issues of sexuality. Issues of temporality and sexuality conjoin in the spectre of AIDS, which exacerbates the tendency toward apocalyptic rhetoric and representations of AIDS. Indeed, the language of apocalypse permeates the medical, social and cultural representations of AIDS, and not surprisingly, the novels about AIDS. AIDS as apocalypse means the intense focus on the End AIDS threatens: death, inexorable, non-redemptive; the destruction of communities, families, couples, with little or no hope for a cure; an ending with few consolations. The apocalyptic narrative paradigm for novels about AIDS, then, is a narrative that represents AIDS as a one-way ticket to death. Associated with this narrative paradigm is what could be called an "AIDS plot," and, as I will illustrate, various elements of Reed's novel, Facing It, combine to generate a plot dynamic that thrusts the narrative inexorably forward toward an apocalyptic ending.

2.2.3 The Popularity of Apocalyptic Narratives

       Certain narrative structures or plots have had long literary histories in Judeo-Christianity. Indeed, as many narrative theorists have remarked, traditional novels tend either to have comic plots, which move toward marital union, or to have tragic plots, which fall toward death.[6] In the case of AIDS, which has often been seen as a tragic affliction dooming heroic young men in the prime of their lives, there is a powerful appeal to use a tragic plot trajectory, which moves toward their deaths, as a way to describe their lives. Historically, the experience of other diseases has also led to the popularity of this tragic plot structure. During the nineteenth-century, for example, consumption (pulmonary tuberculosis) became a popular disease to depict in tragic literature, and, as Jeffrey Meyer points out, John Keats' life history seemed to enact a tragic plot. Keats became the embodiment of a Romantic tradition of disease, which, according to Meyer, privileged the diseased character as a heroic and noble, yet doomed, figure.[7]

       The tragic plot becomes apocalyptic when the tragedy is no longer confined to an individual but threatens us all, and the twentieth-century, with its world wars, genocides and nuclear threats, has been an apocalyptic century. Apocalypse and plague come together in Albert Camus' The Plague as a way for Camus to comment on the cosmic condition of humanity following the atrocities of World War II. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that in this historical context, and because there is as yet no cure for it, AIDS has so often been described as an apocalyptic plague (on one extreme, as God's Judgment of the immoral, and on the other, as a modern-day Holocaust).[8] Unfortunately, as queer scholars have noted, apocalyptic language, when used to describe gay men with AIDS, has oftentimes overlapped with an insidious, homophobic tendency in literature about homosexual men to mark gay characters as plague-ridden and doomed.[9] Due to these multiply interacting and mutually informing traditions, the apocalyptic narrative paradigm has had a tremendously popular appeal for novelists who write about AIDS, since it is an easy form to utilize, in part because of its well-established history and easy applicability for representing AIDS.

       The popularity of the apocalyptic narrative paradigm, however, depends upon the novelist's relationship to AIDS. As Meyers notes of Solzhenitzyn, who had cancer, when a writer is sick with a disease, he or she does not participate in the "Romantic" tradition that idealizes disease.[10] Indeed, since the stakes involved in representing AIDS are much higher for them, the novels written by people living with AIDS differ quite markedly from those written by people who do not have AIDS.[11]  For many novelists living with AIDS, the apocalyptic narrative of AIDS threatens absolute destruction, and as they fight for their lives, their novels also fight for life, seeking to resist the mortal destructiveness of this narrative and to create alternative, life-affirming narratives.[12] Thus, another possible explanation for the popularity of the apocalyptic AIDS narrative may be linked to the fortunate fact that the great majority of people living and writing in the United States do not have AIDS and can afford to unproblematically engage the pre-existent cultural narrative of AIDS.

2.3 The Apocalyptic Narrative of AIDS in the 1980's

       Critics have noted the historical and medical accuracy of the depiction of AIDS in Facing It.[13] Though the novel was published in 1984, its dated entries mark an even earlier historical time period in the history of AIDS. The narrative spans roughly seven months, beginning with June 1981 and ending in mid-February 1982. The earliness of these dates is important, because the medical knowledge about AIDS was only just beginning. In fact, the novel begins during the very month the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) published its first report of an epidemic of pneumocystis pneumonia afflicting gay men. And, the novel accurately depicts how AIDS was first known as GRID (Gay-Related-Immune-Disorder) and only came to be known as AIDS in 1982. Indeed, it wasn't until 1984 that HIV was confirmed as the virus that causes AIDS.[14]

       Fear, mystery and paranoia played a large role in the cultural consciousness of AIDS at this time, especially because so little was known medically about it.[15] Rhetoric and metaphor rushed in to fill the gap created by this lack of scientific knowledge. As the death count increased exponentially, AIDS began to be perceived as a mortal illness and a horrifyingly lethal plague. There was a sense of time rushing forward apocalyptically, of time running out. In his important work, And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts describes the sense of urgency in January 1982, "We are losing time, and time is the enemy in any epidemic. The disease is moving even if the government isn't" (121). In New York City, where the epidemic struck with the earliest severity, Larry Kramer wrote "1, 112 and Counting" as a way to inflame his community and stir it to action, and in 1983, he helped form the Gay Men's Health Crisis, which became a way for the gay community to help care for itself in lieu of the apathy of the "general public." The New York gay community did not have the time during this early period of the epidemic to write novels about AIDS, because it was so swept up in basic survival. As Paul Reed points out in an essay, "Early AIDS Fiction,"  "New Yorkers, and gay New Yorkers in particular, found themselves amidst the swirling maelstrom of death and dying, without even a moment to pause and reflect..." (93). As he goes on to note, "It was the dubious fortune of the west coast and the rest of the nation to have the time to look up and see the train racing down the tracks before it hit" (93). Though both Reed and Shilts write from San Francisco's gay community, they situate the early years of the American AIDS epidemic in New York, and like Larry Kramer, they both emphasize the mounting numbers of dead and the mortal trajectory of AIDS time. Reed wrote Facing It and Shilts wrote And the Band Played On to educate the public about AIDS and to raise public consciousness about the threat it poses.

2.4 The Critical Reception to Facing It

       Published by a small San Francisco press, Gay Sunshine Press, Facing It  did not achieve widespread public recognition, though it did receive comment in the gay literary community.[16] The educational aspects of Facing It have garnered the book both its highest praise and its deepest criticism. Repeatedly commented upon has been the accuracy of the novel's depictions of AIDS, both as a syndrome suffered by individuals as well as an epidemic fought by the medical establishment. The early reviewer Joseph Interrante, for example, notes that "the educational aspects of Facing It are extremely important," and the novel "presents basic medical facts about the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS... [and] traces the politicizations of the medical crisis and the concomitant obstructions to research and treatment of AIDS" (6). In a later essay, entitled "AIDS and the American Novel," Emmanuel Nelson calls the novel a "carefully researched work" (51). Gay critics applaud Reed's depiction of the gay couple, Andy and David, as they face AIDS, as McGovern writes, "In spite of the obstacles of alienation, loneliness, and death from AIDS, Reed affirms the possibility of a loving monogamous relationship between two gay men" (354).

       Though there is general agreement about the importance of the educational aspects of Facing It, there is also general agreement that the novel does not integrate these aspects into a smoothly cohesive, larger form. The critics find different explanations for the novel's awkwardness. Interrante points out that Reed's use of a question-and-answer style of dialogue as a way to convey much of the information about AIDS "sometimes makes the dialogue seem overly didactic and somewhat wooden" (7).  Nelson attributes the awkward style of the novel to it being Reed's first novel (51), whereas Rochelle Ratner finds fault with the plot (92). Though Facing It will not be remembered for the literary execution of its themes, it will be remembered as "a welcome addition to our struggle to learn to live with AIDS."[17]

2.5 The Narrative Structure of Facing It

Facing It interweaves the life stories of two different white men, a fifty-year-old, straight doctor, Walter Branch, and Andrew Stone, a twenty-eight-year-old, gay activist, both living in New York City. Walter had delivered Andy as a baby in a restaurant during a blizzard while he was still in medical school, and he has continued a friendship with Andy ever since. The novel begins with Andy visiting Walter at his office, complaining of mysterious symptoms of ill health. The primary plot unfolds as an unraveling of the medical mystery presented by Andy's symptoms. What could it be that's making him so tired? Possibly hepatitis, but what is it that is causing the painful staph infections? Eventually, it becomes clear that Andy has AIDS, and the novel charts the various reactions principle characters, including David, several of their friends, and Andy's family, have to facing AIDS.   A secondary plot intermingles with the primary one and it traces the ugly political and financial machinations involved in medical research.[18] This secondary plot culminates in a final, successful confrontation, in which Walter's wealthy and influential wife coerces Art Macguire, the closeted homosexual who is in charge of finances at Mt. Zion hospital, to make funds available for AIDS research.

2.6 The Genre of Facing It

       One way we might describe Facing It is as a medical "mystery" novel, in which the characters seek to uncover what is ailing Andy.[19] As Walter Branch and the other doctors attempt to interpret his symptoms, and Andy and David try to understand the changes wrought on their lives by Andy's sickness, the narrative moves forward to confirm what we, the readers, already suspect. It is this gap between what the reader knows (at least from the title, if not from the cataloguing of the ominous and incriminating symptoms) and what the characters do not know, in part the historical gap between the medical knowledge of 1981 and that of 1984 (and beyond), that helps fuel the suspenseful dynamic of the story. We read on, wondering when will they realize what Andy really has, when will they finally "face" it, when will Andy finally die. This dynamic presupposes that we as readers have a particular attitude toward AIDS and its effects on temporality, namely that it eradicates time due to its fatal "nature" (I use this term intentionally). The novel thus forces us to also "face" AIDS. Because we readers "know" there is no cure for AIDS, we watch in horrified confirmation that Andy cannot be "saved."

       This concern with the future, of when Andy will die, keeps the narrative moving forward and emphasizing the future, rather than focusing on the present or the past. The present, which includes the unveiling of progressively gruesome, new symptoms and Andy's deteriorating health, is important only as it signifies the oncoming future and what will be the end result of Andy's illness. Memory and the past play only perfunctory roles in the narrative.[20] The first chapter, for example, only briefly alludes to Dr. Branch's history as a medical researcher and it summarily enumerates how Branch came to deliver Andy into the world. Chapter Two then quickly fills us in on Andy's life story: his homophobic family, especially his father; his coming to gay consciousness in the 70's, with the help of Stonewall and his therapist; his political activism working for gay rights; his meeting David Markman in 1977 and their blossoming relationship. After this summary history, the narrative then halts its recollection of the past to focus again on the ailing present, a time in which, as David notes, "something was wrong, something imprecise, subtle" (31). The narrative then reiterates the specificity of the actual, historically significant time of the present: "And then it had begun. Early in the spring of 1981" (32). The past and present are only important to the narrative in how they lead us to the "real" story, of when "it had begun."

       As the overall narrative moves forward, what's ailing Andy, writes its own narrative onto Andy's body and begins to take over the larger narrative. AIDS writes an all-consuming narrative over Andy's life, eating up and destroying the other narrative threads and options Andy's life initially has, to finally become the only narrative left to Andy; at this final point, he dies. This all-consuming destructiveness of the narrative AIDS writes over Andy's life not only destroys Andy but any alternative narrative options available to the novel as well.[21] This is an important aspect of why I call this an "apocalyptic" paradigm, because it not only terminates the life of the person living with AIDS, but the narrative life of the novel as well. The closure is absolute, inescapable and unredeemable. The end is absolute, apocalyptic destruction.[22]

2.7 The Title: Facing It: a Novel of AIDS

       The title initiates the apocalyptic narrative paradigm of the novel.[23] According to the dictionary, "facing" something can be read several ways: "1. To confront impudently. 2. To stand with face forward. 3. To meet face to face. 4. To oppose firmly; resist. 5. To contemplate the prospect of" (295). In the context of this particular novel and the "it" which is faced, definitions numbered 2 ("to stand with face forward") and 5 ("to contemplate the prospect of") seem most applicable, though periodically the characters in the novel try to accomplish definition number 4 ("to oppose firmly; resist"). The present tense of the word, "facing," is important, because of what is being faced, namely, AIDS. Indeed, this "facing" is presented as a temporal problem, because to stand facing forward, is to look toward the future, the future of AIDS, which threatens to turn the present tense of "facing" into the past tense of the dead and historically ended. The narrative plays out the terms of its title, with its protagonist, Andy Stone, and his lover, David Markman, "facing it" and the impending death that AIDS threatens to Andy's life. In fact, as the narrative moves forward toward the future that is faced, a slippage occurs in the meaning assigned to the vague term, "it." Though "it" initially seems to signify AIDS, as Andy's health deteriorates, "it" also becomes synonymous with death. We can see that even within the novel's title, the apocalyptic rhetoric of AIDS, which asserts AIDS=death, is at work.[24]

2.8 The Importance of The Opening Chapter

       The opening chapter of Facing It sets the medical mystery dynamic into motion, which will, as every piece falls into place, confirm Andy's death. The themes of time, appearance and medical logic are introduced in this first chapter and play important roles in putting this dynamic into motion.

2.8.1 Time

       Chapter One begins with a date and a location for the scene which is about to unfold: "June 1981, New York City." This historical and geographical specificity initiates the sense that this will be a "realistic" if not a "true" account, and this emphasis on veracity will become important as the narrative unfolds.[25] The opening lines then read,

Had it been some other season of the year, Dr. Walter Branch wouldn't have given the hospital morgue a second thought. But now, in the heat of early summer, late on a Friday afternoon, he remembered that there was, somewhere at least, one cool spot to which he could retreat should the heat get much worse. (9)

These opening sentences not only reiterate a concern with time (eg. "early summer, "late on a Friday afternoon"), but also introduce the setting, a hospital, and the initial allusion to death through reference to the morgue. Additionally, this opening conveys a sense that this particular time is a bad one, so bad, in fact, that it makes Branch think of the morgue as relief. It is so unbearably, almost feverishly, hot, that the death-like coolness of the morgue, kept cool to perserve the corpses, becomes attractive. The opening then describes the first event to take place in the story: "there were patients waiting, and more work to be done in the lab, so Dr. Branch opted for just a moment sitting down in his inner office" (9). The first action of the novel is thus the ceasing of action - Dr. Branch resting tiredly for a moment and thinking to himself about the heat, his fatigue and the morgue.

       The following paragraphs continue to build the sense of the intolerableness of the heat and the sense of time passing away, of tiring out:

The heat was sweltering, unendurable really, and this corner of the hospital - built of brick at the end of the last century - was like an oven. The ventilation system, which, to Branch's amusement, some called air-conditioning, failed altogether if the temperature exceeded ninety-five degrees. And it has, Branch thought to himself. (9)

Because this wing of the hospital is so old, it cannot function properly when submitted to high levels of stress on its system; it is overcome and its inhabitants pay the price. At this point in the opening scene, Branch becomes linked thematically to the hospital. The passage of time has affected them both: "He was tired today, and he looked it...He looked his age - fifty years, with his fifty-first birthday approaching in the fall" (9-10).

2.8.2 Appearance

       This transition in the opening scene to an emphasis on appearance introduces a new theme, which will gain increased importance as the narrative unfolds. The passage continues,

He wasn't handsome, but neither was he ugly; his face was kindly, the sort of face that would suit the grandfatherly years. He was tall, not fat. His thin hair, once chestnut, was now almost all gray. The chestnut still showed in his bushy eyebrows, only lightly salted with gray. Deep lines were etched in his cheeks, lines that deepened with every smile. He had the thin lips of a native New Englander, as well as a stiff posture.

       Today, the heat and fatigue of his work was beginning to show in his face. (10).

This passage is important for several reasons. First, it establishes the narrative's meticulous attention to specific, physical details, such as Branch's hair color and his posture. It also, yet again, expresses a concern with the passage of time, and now there's a mention of the future. Not only is Branch's next birthday, his fifty-first to be exact, approaching, but the description of him also notes that he would look good in his "grandfatherly years." This alludes to a geneological history; to be a grandfather is most likely to be a heterosexual and is to have grandchildren, to have lived through several generations, which, as we will find out, is exactly what Andy, a gay person with AIDS, will never have.

       Indeed, the next event to happen is that Dr. Branch encounters Andy. We first see Andy through Branch's eyes, a doctor's eyes, which clinically take in every physical detail of Andy's appearance and there is an overwhelming sense of deterioration:

Branch was so shocked by Andy's appearance that he hesitated for a moment. "Hi, Andy," he answered, regaining his composure. "It's been quite a while since you've been to see me. What can I do for you?" Branch was formal as he tried to hide his shock.

       Andy related his symptoms to Dr. Branch, and the doctor took a long look at him as he spoke. Usually quite robust and muscular, Andy now looked extremely tired, pale, and much thinner. He had never seen Andy so drawn, with such a pallor. He frowned as he listened to the litany of complaints. (11)

This passage portrays the initial ways in which AIDS has begun to write itself onto Andy's body and into his life narrative.

2.8.3 Medical Mystery

       Another aspect of this opening scene that is crucial to establishing the narrative dynamic is the role medical diagnostic logic and procedure play in it. We learn early in the opening paragraphs that Dr. Branch has had to forego most of his general practice in order to keep up "a frantic pace as an immunological and infectious diseases researcher" (10), though he does allow himself to continue special clinical work that involves "the more specialized medical problems that dumbfounded general practitioners" (10). This foreshadowing continues, when later as Andy apologizes for being a general patient, who he's sure Branch doesn't really have time for, Branch responds, "'I just have to restrict myself mostly to the rare cases'" (12). These references convey the sense that Dr. Branch specializes in exploring medical mysteries, that he looks for the unusual, which leads the reader to suspect that Andy's case may develop into one.

       As he and Andy interact, his role as medical detective, a kind of medical Sherlock Holmes, becomes clear. He begins by asking Andy, "'What can I do for you?'" (11) and both observes and listens to Andy's evidence, the litany of clinical symptoms. He processes this data, and, as he physically examines Andy's body, he asks pointed questions to establish a contextualized understanding of Andy's symptoms, asking about Andy's job and his lover, David. Based upon his examination of the physical evidence and Andy's responses to his questions, Dr. Branch provisionally diagnoses Andy as having hepatitis:

       Andy started to put his shirt back on. "What is it?"

  "I don't know," Branch said, "but I'd like to do some blood work to check for hepatitis. It often shows up just like this."

       Andy looked crestfallen. "Hepatitis? Oh, shit! How the hell did I get hepatitis? I mean, I take care of myself; I don't understand." He was shocked and frustrated. "I don't have time for it, anyway. Don't you have to stay in bed for six weeks or something?" (13, my emphasis)

The question, "What is it?," will drive the narrative forward, as Andy, Dr. Branch and the other characters of the novel seek to answer this question. The narrative will play with the ambiguity of "it," seeking to interpret, to arrive at its meaning, to define, to narrativize this ominous vagueness. Also, of key importance in this scene is Andy's angry exclamation, "I don't have time for it," because time will become the key issue for Andy. Indeed, Andy will ultimately have no time for anything but "it," though at this point, his life consists of many narrative strands and this particular narrative strand is one he does not want to follow. The end of this passage reads as ironically prophetic to us, because, as we suspect from the title, Andy will not be in bed only "for six weeks or something."

       If we are initially tempted as is Andy to be lulled into Dr. Branch's diagnosis of hepatitis, we like Andy are just as soon jolted out of our complacency by the next narrative development, the sinister unveiling of another, mysteriously anomolous symptom. As Andy prepares to leave, he remembers something. "'Oh!' Andy exclaimed, unbuttoning his shirt again. 'I almost forgot; I wanted you to look at these sores here.' Andy took his shirt off again and pointed to a number of small red sores in his armpit" (14). Dr. Branch notes these as a staph infection, which is not usually indicative of hepatitis, but he  says that he'll do a workup on Andy's blood for hepatitis, prescribe him something for his painful staph infection, and that meanwhile, Andy should rest. As Andy leaves, however, Branch is plagued by doubts:

Even if it was hepatitis - which he was sure it must be - there was something else that troubled him. He had quite a diagnostic skill, as well as a native intuition, and he was troubled by Andy's sudden decline. It wasn't just the hepatitis, he told himself; no, there was something seriously wrong, something anomalous that made him suspicious. (15)

In his concern, Dr. Branch then calls and converses with a fellow doctor involved in clinical research about Andy's case. The other doctor tells him not to worry.

       It is in this last portion of the first chapter that the secondary plot of the novel begins, which involves Dr. Branch's life as a medical researcher, whose research experiences have been frustrated by lack of time and by medical politics. Though the novel does not always succeed in seamlessly interweaving the two plots, this secondary plot  enables Reed to address another set of issues with regard to "facing it," the degree to which politics in medical research determine who receives funding and what is studied. The chapter concludes by returning to the primary story-line and forefronts Branch's concern over the medical mystery posed by Andy's symptoms:

He barely perceived that Meg [his secretary] had left. He was absorbed in Andy's file. Something's out of kilter there, he thought; he hoped it was just a case of hepatitis. He made one last notation in Andy's file, then closed it and picked up he next. He began dictating. (21)

2.9.1 Medical Realism and Facing It as "AIDS 101"

       Besides "medical mystery," Facing It could also be categorized as a work of "medical realism." There are several ways we could describe this type of novel. On the most superficial level, the tone of the novel is unrelenting in its earnest, reporter-like seriousness, which is tied to its subject-matter, the description of a medical crisis. As a work of "medical realism," Facing It contains none of the humor, romance or fantasy of other kinds of AIDS novels, such as the humor in David Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed and the romance in Paul Monette's two AIDS novels, Afterlife and Halfway Home. Instead, Facing It focuses on the "facts" about AIDS, medical and otherwise, which, as they are made known, sentence Andy to  death. 

2.9.2 AIDS and the Body

       Another way in which Facing It depicts "medical realism," is in its unrelenting cataloging and reporting of Andy's various and encroaching ailments.[26] We are told, early on, that Andy had been quite good looking. In fact, when Dr. Branch's secretary, Meg, expresses her disappointment that Andy and David are still together, she notes his attractiveness:

  "Is he still with David?" she [Meg] asked.

  "Yes," Branch said, "and he says that David's doing fine."

  "And that's too bad, too!" Meg said, and then, seeing Dr. Branch frowning again, she said, "I'm only kidding, doctor. Its just that Andy's so handsome." (16)

Later, in the opening of Chapter Two, we watch Andy try to come to terms with the possible diagnosis that he has hepatitis. As he looks in the mirror to study himself, we too, look at him:

Okay, what do I see? he asked himself, studying his face in a new light. Though he had lost some weight, it had helped define his features more clearly. His jet-black hair offset his steel-gray eyes, which were highlighted by the thick moustache. At twenty-eight, he was one of the most handsome young men in Manhattan, and his looks seemed perpetually to improve, though it was hard to improve on perfection. Or so his lover said. Still, as he stared at his own classically handsome face, there was a remnant of fear. Why was he so tired? Why was he losing weight? (22).

This is a significant passage for several reasons. First, as in many novels about gay men with AIDS, there is an emphasis on how beautiful the men were who were stricken with AIDS.[27] In part, this could have been due to the availability of sex for beautiful men, as the narrative later notes about Andy's personal sexual history: "He let his moustache grow, black and thick. He appraised himself in mirrors, naked or dressed; he learned to use his beauty to win sexual favors" (28). Another aspect of the passage is that the narrative does not directly report Andy's appearance; rather, we see Andy by reflection, looking into the mirror with him and seeing Andy in the glass.

       Mirrors, mirroring and a beautiful man bring to mind Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and the work of recent theorists of male sexuality like Eve Sedgwick and Jeff Nunokawa. Wilde tells the story of an incredibly handsome young man, whose beauty is worshiped by other men. He becomes obsessed that he might lose his beauty, so he lets a painter preserve his image, a mirror of his beauty, on canvas. As the narrative unfolds, however, the picture becomes horribly disfigured, mirroring the corruption of Dorian Gray's soul, though his face remains angelically pure until the very end, when Dorian dies. As Sedgwick and Nunokawa have noted, there are disturbing implications to this story, with its linking of beauty and homosexuality to corrupting and fatal influences. In his reading of the story, Nunokawa notes the lethal characterization of male homosexual identity as "a spectacle defined by a figure of death" (315). From this homophobic perspective, AIDS is the latest manifestation of the doomed nature of homosexual men, and, like the spectacle of Dorian Gray's painting, AIDS wears itself on the bodies of its victims.

       Indeed, as the narrative of Facing It progresses, we see Andy's looks destroyed. Andy himself notes this: "he himself was a bad sight, so thin, so very exhausted. There was nothing he could do; the illness wore itself on his face" (122). As the novel and Andy's AIDS progress, his condition writes itself graphically, horrendously, on his body: "...Andy had worsened, terribly. There had been a new and sudden proliferation of KS lesions all over his body, and the staph infection had broken out again in his groin. Andy showed the red, pustular sores and the KS lesions to David..." (196). The medical realism of the novel spares us nothing about the effect of AIDS on Andy's appearance.[28] In the end, as Andy lies in the hospital bed, the horror is complete:

David just stared as he stood by the side of the bed. He could barely recognize Andy now. In just a few short days he had broken out with herpes lesions, in addition to the staph lesions and the Kaposi's sarcoma. The herpes blisters covered a good part of Andy's face and neck, red, running. (210)

2.9.3 AIDS and the Mind

       Another aspect of the medical realism of the novel is its thorough reporting of the various emotional and psychological stages that both Andy and David go through as they "face it."[29] As Part One of the novel ends, Andy's diagnosis has been changed from the provisional diagnosis of hepatitis to the possibility of "gay cancer," because Dr. Branch has found a lesion in Andy's mouth. They await the biopsy results. Part Two then describes in great detail the emotional reactions Andy and David undergo once the diagnosis of KS is confirmed.

       Andy's initial emotional reactions are varied, and the narrative reports their shifting intensities in detail:

And then, as he absent-mindedly stepped into the street and was narrowly missed by a speeding limousine, he felt his sorrow turn to denial. It can't be! To end like this? The equation did him wrong, he felt; it wasn't fair...Oh, but he felt an edge of anger, of betrayal, but still the persistent fact: he would die. The sense of betrayal disturbed him the most. He felt he had been betrayed beyond his control too many times. First, it had been his sexuality, different from others. Though he had learned fast enough to accept that, it had been the crux of the matter for his parents' betrayal of him. And now the cancer. (81)

Besides depicting Andy's feelings, the novel also portrays the psychological adjustments David must go through to live with Andy's illness. Denial, fear, anger, jealousy, are all tracked as they make their way through David's consciousness:

He looked at Andy, now stirring and opening his eyes, and felt a great wave of jealousy that it was his turn, his dignity that was facing death. David wanted it then, wanted to go with Andy. But then Andy smiled, yawned, and beckoned to David. The moment was past; the fear distilled to bland expectancy. David went to the couch and hugged his lover. (176)

By the end of Part Three and the conclusion of the novel, both Andy and David have reached a stage of acceptance, and it is at this point that they both are emotionally prepared to "face it," which in this case means Andy's death:

He stood and held Andy close, saying nothing. It was a moment when the whole of Andy's illness became a true reality, when both of them saw together that they had weathered a storm and, moreover, that there was more to come: they accepted Andy's illness. And they gathered their strength for what was left. (197)

Part III of the novel also reports the psychological effects that knowledge of Andy's illness has on his family members, which, after a long family struggle, results in a pact of silence about Andy and his illness: "Beth continued to cry in her mother's arms. Edna Stone comforted her child, her heart filled with regret that such an ugly scene had taken place. She now, too, felt as Chuck did: they had had enough. It was best left alone" (194-5).

2.9.4 AIDS and the Politics of Medical Research

       Besides telling a medically realistic story about Andy's personal struggle with AIDS, the novel also comments on some of the larger issues involved with AIDS, including its historical status as a new epidemic and the political machinations involved in AIDS research.[30] As I have noted earlier, the dated and geographically identified sections of the novel play a significant role in the larger context of the AIDS epidemic, since New York and San Francisco were the earliest places that GRID was identified. In each of the three sections of the novel, there are explicit references to the larger epidemic and its progression. First, in Part One, there is a direct citation from the historically significant first report in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, dated July 3, 1981, which noted a statistically significant number of gay men suffering from pneumocystis pneumonia (43). Then, in Part Two, there is an excerpt from an Associated Press release, dated August 28, 1981, which includes the findings of Dr. Harold Jaffe's research that the number of gay men affected by KS, pneumocystis and/or other strange diseases related to immune compromise had greatly increased since the CDC's July report and that now a woman had also been reported with pneumocystis (116).

       Finally, in Part Three, we witness David's interview with the medical researcher, Max Kinder-Mann, who explains how he thinks AIDS operates: "'I think there is a specific infectious agent - a virus, or perhaps a constellation of viruses - which destroys the T helpers. We need to find it'" (185). Kinder-Mann's point of view here reflects the latest medical knowledge of 1984, which, though the novel doesn't name it, was the discovery of HIV. It is also in this interview that the novel addresses some of the complex political and economic  implications of AIDS being sexually transmitted. Like Shilts' reporting of the controversies that raged in the gay communities about how to deal with AIDS, Kinder-Mann speaks to David about the complexities of trying to publicize the dangers of gay sex to gay communities: "'Now if I go around stating that everyone must stop having sex, what about the economy? What about all those institutions whose very existence is predicated upon sexual freedom?'" (187).

       The politics involved in AIDS research are represented in the secondary plot of Dr. Branch's attempts to gain research money to study AIDS. Dr. Branch's desire to study AIDS is ridiculed by a rabidly homophobic colleague, who sarcastically says to him, "'Fags are big news nowadays, and dead ones are even better news. Think what coverage this will get'" (105). Repeatedly through the novel, Dr. Branch's requests for funds to pursue AIDS research are denied by the closeted administrator, Arthur Maguire, who tells him, "'We're facing major cutbacks in funding of every research topic. And with something this politically loaded - what with the homosexual element and all - well it's all delicate and avoidable'" (76). Maguire only finally agrees to release funds for AIDS research when Branch's wife, Carolyn, threatens to out him, which, as she points out, would ruin him: "He was perspiring. She had backed him into a corner. She was right; her threat was a real one. Certain members of the board and the administration would never tolerate a revelation of his tastes, even now. He was beat; he would have to maintain the lie" (209). Though this secondary plot and the commentary about the history and implications of the larger AIDS epidemic help educate the reader, a kind of "AIDS 101," as critic Interrante has called the novel (7), none of it helps Andy or David "face it." In fact, by the end of his interview with Dr. Kinder-Mann, David rejects the larger political implications of the epidemic to focus on his and Andy's personal battle: "The information on the nature of AIDS was useful to him; no one had yet published that explanation. But the rest, the political jabber, he could do without. Particularly since Andy lay at home, very close, David suddenly felt, to death" (188).

       Though funding is made available for more AIDS research and the novel ends with the medical knowledge about AIDS increasing, there is not enough time for Andy to be able to wait until the scientists discover a treatment for AIDS. Ultimately, the historical, political and personal accounts of the AIDS epidemic work together to forefront the apocalyptic narrative of AIDS, which writes itself across the text, closing off, killing, the life-affirming narratives of the novel.

2.10 The Narrative "Life" of a Protagonist

       In literary forms like the novel, the life of a protagonist is typically represented as a complex interweaving of many different narrative strands. It is as the drama of the novel unfolds and these narrative strands are set into motion that larger patterns emerge. For example, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, the life of Elizabeth Bennett is represented periodically as daughter, sister, desirable young woman, adversary. These different narratives that compose Elizabeth interact and combine in certain ways that help contribute to making the novel a romance; her reformulation of the narratives about herself and Darcy, for example, help lead her to form a union with him. In other kinds of novels, the lives of the protagonists are destroyed. For example, in Richard Wright's Native Son, the many different narrative strands that initially compose Bigger Thomas as protagonist - his life as chauffeur, son, brother, lover - are all stripped from him. One way to distinguish between romance and tragedy then, is that in romance, the connection between narrative strands is emphasized, whereas in tragedy, the disjunctions and ultimately the destruction of narrative strands (the life of the protagonist) is emphasized. In the case of Facing It, Andy's life is initially represented as a series of intertwined narratives - Andy as gay activist, as son and brother, as lover. During the course of the novel, each of these strands that compose Andy's life is killed off by the plot AIDS writes over his life.

2.10.1  Life as Work and Community

       In the beginning of the novel, Andy's work as a political activist plays a large role in his life. Almost immediately, however, it is threatened by his illness: "For a year he had been working to get the gay rights ordinance passed by the city council, and they were nearing a critical juncture; if Andy dropped out of the picture for a few weeks, the thing could truly be jeopardized again" (23). As the novel continues and Andy's condition worsens enough that he has to cut back from his work, we find that his project is being undercut:

...in Andy's absence, Mitch had been able to divert attention away from promotion of the gay rights ordinance by recruiting staff members to work on his pet projects. Andy couldn't be there much anymore, and his illness left him tired when he was there; he kept fighting, but he was losing to Mitch and to his own absence from the issue. (53)

Ultimately, the ordinance isn't passed and Andy's life as an activist dies. David becomes more politically active in his frustration over AIDS, and he decides to turn his writing skills from editting romance novels to writing political journalism:

He felt the pent-up tension and insanity flow out as he realized a goal; he would write about the medical crisis, would let those people know that something was going on in gay America, something serious, something deadly...He had felt, lately, that he might burst if something didn't change, and now he saw that he could help change it by blowing it up, publicly. (127)

The novel at this point indicates a bit of hope, that David might develop a political life that would offset the death of Andy's. However, when his activism seems about to yield fruit in his interview with Kinder-Mann, he cannot continue thinking as an activist but as a worried lover: "Suddenly he was preoccupied with Andy, with worries about his being in New York alone" (188).

       AIDS not only destroys Andy's life as gay activist but robs him of his membership in the gay community as well. Unlike other AIDS novels, including Clayton Graham's Tweeds and Paul Monette's Afterlife, which emphasize the love and support networks formed by gay friendships, in Facing It, Andy and David are left alone in their struggle to face AIDS. The novel does not often describe their gay friends, indeed at one point Andy notes to himself that "He and David had few other friends" (82). When Andy becomes sick, however, the novel does describe how one of their few gay friends behaves: "'Did you notice?' Andy asked, 'that when Rita came to give me a hug, Jim made a straight line for the door, as far away from me as he could get?'" (62). In response to Jim's behavior, they distance themselves from their friends: "...based on the brief experience with Rita and Jim. They would simply not discuss the problem with their friends..." (62).

2.10.2 Life as Person With AIDS 

       In many novels about AIDS, the forming of friendships with other people living with AIDS (PLWAs) plays an important role in helping the progatonist live with AIDS.[31] Perhaps because Facing It describes a period of time early in the AIDS epidemic, there are not many PLWAs portrayed in the novel.[32] In the early portion of Part Two, when Andy is first positively diagnosed with KS, he feels intensely isolated and alone: "He felt a terrible isolation, as though he were frighteningly and absolutely alone. Never in his life had he felt such real horror that his body was diseased and that he would, most likely, die (79). Dr. Branch hopes to help Andy cope with his experience by talking to the one other patient he knows who is dealing with KS: "'But before you go, I want you to meet someone else who's undergoing the same treatments...I just thought it might be helpful to you to meet someone else who'll be going through the same thing you will'" (109). This other patient's name is Patrick, and Andy feels a bit better when he connects with someone who is living a similar experience to his: "Andy shook his hand and smiled. He had expected to feel some apprehension, but he felt a vague relief, something like coming home after a long trip. Andy sat beside Patrick and made small talk..." (109). At this point in the story, there is the sense that possibly, Andy will find a sense of shared community by being able to form a relationship with Patrick, another PLWA.

       As Part Two of the novel continues and Andy is confirmed as having AIDS, however, the narrative denies this possibility and reasserts the horror of AIDS. There is a sense that Patrick's decline foreshadows Andy's; at least it darkens Andy's sense of hope for himself:

He hadn't been able to talk with Patrick as he had hoped, because within a week of commencing chemotherapy, the young man had taken a serious turn for the worse and been hospitalized in isolation. Knowing that Patrick had done so badly did not reassure Andy about his own progress. He remained scared and doubtful. (121)

Andy finally gets a chance to connect with Patrick toward the end of Part Two, but only after he has had a premonition that Patrick is dying. By the time Andy finds him in his hospital room, Patrick has gone mad:

He could tell now that this shell of a man was just a whisper of the one he had met only weeks before, and the senseless babble was disheartening; Andy didn't like to consider that he, too, might end in madness...For a long time Andy just sat there and stared at Patrick, sick with the image of a bright young man dying in such misery and wildness. It had a profound effect on Andy at that moment, and Andy felt that he had, somehow, not tried hard enough; he had conceded to the cancer too soon.

       And as he sat there, holding Patrick's thin, weak hand in his own, Andy decided that he would either beat this thing or go with dignity. (130)

At this moment, when Andy finally connects with Patrick and witnesses his extreme suffering, Andy is inspired to try and fight his illness. But, since the novel has not provided any sense that Andy might "beat this thing" (especially, since to this day, there is yet no cure for AIDS and the mortality figures continue to rise with time), it is the second half of his decision, "to go with dignity," that will prevail. However, this statement yet again foregrounds the death AIDS represents, and we, like Andy, read Patrick's decline as presaging Andy's.

       Patrick disappears from the narrative after this. Half way through Part Three, we find out in passing that Patrick has died. The narrative does not let us witness his death; his death is silenced. Instead, we only hear after the fact about the maliciously homophobic and isolated circumstances in which he has died:

One of the nurses on the evening shift had told him [Dr. Branch] a bizarre and cruel story. Apparently Dr. Irving Krantz had, the day before, made some joking wager about "how long that crazy fag in room 217 would last; any bets?"

  The story made Branch sick. He didn't doubt that Krantz was capable of such insensitivity. But "that crazy fag," Branch knew, was Patrick Ross. And Patrick Ross had just died. (189)

The chance that Andy might find solace in a community of people living with AIDS does not happen in this novel. There are only two people with AIDS portrayed; with Patrick, we see someone who intensely suffers and who dies horribly alone. Andy's sense of isolation is alleviated by the love of his partner, David, and his concerned doctor, Dr. Branch. When Andy dies, there is someone there who cares and who can witness his bravery in confronting his death. In the case of both Patrick and Andy, however, the novel emphasizes the mortal trajectory of AIDS for a person living with it.

2.10.3  Family Life 

       Family is another narrative strand that often contributes to the life of characters. In the case of Andy and David, though David's biological family has accepted his homosexuality, Andy's family has not. This rejection by his family continues to affect Andy, and though the novel promotes the sense of a possible reconciliation, in the end, it forcefully shoots it down, killing it.

       In the flashback in Chapter Two, we learn that Andy had involuntarily been outed by his mother, Edna, who discovered gay porno magazines in the mattress of his bed when he was fifteen. She showed them to his father, Chuck, who immediately burned them and sent him to a psychiatrist to try and "cure" him. However, "Twelve psychiatric sessions later Andy heard about the Stonewall riots in New York, and his therapy took a slant his parents had not intended" (24). Indeed, his therapist taught him to be proud of his identity, and historically, this was the exciting time of the seventies and sexual liberation. Life at home was difficult for Andy, because neither his parents nor two of his three sisters approved of him. Only Beth, the youngest, loved and accepted him entirely. When he turned eighteen, he left home for Manhattan with a great sense of relief and hopes of sexual freedom.[33] He coped with the anger and pain of his family's rejection by becoming actively involved in gay politics.

       As the novel progresses and Andy's health deteriorates, however, we find him considering whether or not to contact his family about his illness, and we witness him still aching from his family's rejection:

It was something he couldn't stand; the flu, strep throat, whatever - it always brought out the anxiety, the stuff that he kept bottled up and shut down most of the time. And here was some of it now, the pain of his family's rejection. When the fuck would it just go away? When the fuck could he block it out for good? (40)

       When Andy finally does tell Beth that he has KS, her reactions seem inconsistent with the earlier descriptions of her love for him. First, when he tells her of his diagnosis, the narrative describes her cold reaction: "At first she had been shocked, then, barely concealing her revulsion at the particulars, had grown unexpectedly cold and distant" (100). Then, the narrative describes her telling their parents the news of Andy's condition, in a passage that conveys the intense homophobia of Chuck but which does not explain Beth's motivations for breaking confidence with Andy:

   Elizabeth shook her head. "It's some kind of blood cancer or skin thing; I'm not sure. But it's not like a tumor or something they can cut out."

   Andy's father exploded. "No more! I won't hear another word. I'll tell you what should have been cut out a long time ago!" He was trembling, on the verge of apoplexy..."No, no more! That's the end of it," he commanded, picking up the remote control and flicking on the television. He pressed a button and the volume came up loud. Further conversation would have been impossible. (101)

This passage indicates the tremendous power Chuck has to silence any family discussion about Andy, and it is this silencing power that is Chuck's most powerful homophobic strategy.

       We don't see the family again until Part Three, which delves deeply into the family dynamics and their reaction to news about Andy's deteriorating health. Indeed, Part Three opens with Chapter Twenty-Two, December 1981, Philadelphia, and his mother thinking about her son while reading a national magazine with a story in it about AIDS. As Part Three continues and Andy's health begins to rapidly deteriorate, the narrative hints that Andy's mom will try and make contact with her son. Chapter Twenty-Six ends hopefully, with Edna planning to defy her husband: "She would buy a ticket for New York during the week and simply go. And he wouldn't stop her, not on this one" (180). Unfortunately, in Chapter Twenty-Eight, we discover that Chuck has found the train ticket, "torn it to shreds before her eyes" (189), and, to make matters worse, Edna has told Beth about this. The chapter then describes another of the fierce family confrontations about Andy. Both Edna and Beth struggle to persuade Chuck away from his horrible coldness toward Andy, but he will not be swayed:

He was frozen in her [Beth's] argument. He was filled with inertia. A lifetime of American manhood had produced a man who, in the face of direct pleading from his daughter, could do nothing but stand mute. She stood before him, looking up at her father, expecting - hoping - for an answer. But he stood there, silent. (194)

When David finally calls the family to let them know that Andy is dying, he unfortunately reaches Edna and Chuck, instead of Beth. As Edna cries hysterically for her son, Chuck urges her to stop crying: "'Let's just stop all this now and consider that Andy's already dead, as I did long ago. And we won't tell Beth. Okay? Will you do that?...Will you promise?'" (204). For a moment, she appears to resist him, "She looked up at him with a hatred in her eyes that he would never forget" (204), but then she submits:

She knew, as she nodded her head and agreed to his demand, that she had no choice. He had made that clear two weeks ago; it was either the family life or Andy. And so it was over. She started to cry once again, because she realized as she nodded her head and capitulated, that she would never see Andy again. (204)

We hear no more about Andy's family. Indeed, their agreement to silence - their refusal to face Andy's homosexuality and his death and their conspiracy of silence in lying to their daughter - all act paradoxically to force us to face their behavior, their fear, and we, as we read, must face Andy's death. Any hopes we might have had that Andy's mother or his sister could have been with him in his last moments are squashed by the silence his father imposes on the family. It is in this absolute silence, their refusal to "face it," that Andy's family is as dead to him as much as he is dead to them. Family in Facing It ultimately serves no life-affirming role.[34] Indeed, in the end, they treat Andy as though he were dead, and then he dies.

2.10.4 Love Life

       In adulthood, one of the primary life-affirming narratives is the relationship to one's significant other. By "life-affirming narratives," I mean those stories that we tell of our interactions with others and the world that give us a feeling of agency, of connectedness, of being alive. In traditional heterosexual relationships, the relationship to one's significant other manifests itself in the marital union, "'till death do us part," but because marriage is not yet legally or culturally sanctioned for same sex couples, these couples have to establish their own private bonds. In Facing It, David is Andy's significant other, and we watch as AIDS takes over Andy's life and diminishes their relationship.[35] In the historical flashback of Chapter Two, we discover that they first met in 1977 at a gay pride parade, and after a year of being lovers, Andy moved in with David: "It hadn't been a difficult decision for either of them. Andy was ready for a lover, and David was ready to settle down" (29). Their relationship deepens, but with the normal difficulties of two people bonding:

By the end of 1980, David couldn't imagine a more perfect gay couple, except, of course, for the small details.

       The small details loomed larger as time passed. Andy, in his drive to push an ordinance for gay rights through the City Council, became insufferable and obsessed. And David, in his indecision, became languorous, disinclined to the sort of pace Andy was, by then, addicted to. Though they remained deeply involved, there came to be a tension between them, both angry and hilarious. (31)

Perhaps if the business of their lives had continued as usual, they might have broken up.

       But business does not continue as usual. Andy comes down with his mysterious ailment, which begins to impact the life of their relationship. Much of this impact is registered through David's eyes, as he tries to adjust to Andy's changing condition and to the lack of answers the medical community has about AIDS: "...Andy's health had worsened considerably as far as he could see and the lack of answers was beginning to wear on his nerves and patience" (50). David finds the new world into which Andy enters and into which he is thrust alienating: "But now - now that Andy was becoming more involved in this hospital culture, this medical nightmare - it all began to affect David as well. The place seemed somehow cold, technological; David didn't like it" (51). Through the middle of the novel, as Andy concentrates on his own, personal relationship to his illness, David despairs about their relationship: "After all, David concluded miserably, relationships - and love - need nurturing. But what they had instead was a gradual debilitation, a constant erosion of all they had worked for" (54).

       As Andy comes to terms with AIDS and as his health fails, David begins to draw closer to him:

David was filled with a sudden strength, a vitality borrowed from Andy's dignity. What had seemed so pathetic only a moment before - Andy's ghastly gray pallor, his thinning hair, the hideous lesions on his skin - what had seemed so pathetic now seemed the inverted symbol of Andy's strength. (197)

Following these thoughts, David has a moment of realization, which confirms the value of their relationship:

...it was, for David, one of those rare and triumphant moments of crystal clarity, when the tragedies, as well as victories, of the world somehow fit, a moment when David saw that what had already been accomplished had been good, had been real. He stood and held Andy close, saying nothing. (197)

David stands by Andy to the very end, whispering the last words, "`I love you'" (217), to Andy as he dies. So, even though their relationship languishes through the middle of the novel, by the end, they feel the value of their relationship has been reaffirmed. This reaffirmation is undercut by the narrative, however, because Andy dies at this point. Their relationship cannot continue and the reaffirmation is of something which is now over. [36]

2.10.5 Sex Life

       The reticence of the novel to fully celebrate the life of a gay relationship is reflected in its troubling portrayal of gay sexuality.[37] As Andy's health deteriorates, so too does the sexual life of his relationship with David. The first sexual interaction described in the novel resonates with ominous foreshadowing. At the end of Chapter Two, Andy and David come together, but "Somewhere outside, an accident occurred at just their moment of orgasm; they could hear the squeal of rubber, the rattled thud of steel against steel, the chimes of breaking glass falling to the street" (33). As they begin the struggle to understand what Andy's illness is and whether or not it is infectious, their sex life begins to suffer. In a moment of depression, while waiting at the hospital for Andy as more tests are being run, David notes that "Their sex life had been good until the hepatitis scare, but now, through Andy's fatigue and the uncertainties of what the affliction was, that seemed to be finished" (53).

       The next time they do have sex, it is fraught with unspoken, uncommunicated tension:

[David] laid his hand across Andy's as they sat on the edge of the bed. And then, for the first time in weeks, he felt Andy's fingers close around his in a way that suggested only one thing. "We'll have to be careful," he whispered to David. David sat stiff; he was horny, lord knew, but considering everything, he couldn't, just couldn't do it. He didn't know how to get out of it without making Andy feel more isolated than ever. And so he went through with it, for Andy's sake, not his own. But as he yielded to the feelings, Andy's hand began to stroke the fear and misgiving from him. It was a rare moment, and for some reason, David knew it might very well be their last expression like that. Andy had withdrawn so completely until that moment, and it was likely to happen again. But then Andy's hands forced David to abandon thinking, and he lay back, once again giving himself to his lover, so much like the past, but really so different. Everything had changed. (62).

There are several things to note about this passage. First, we perceive this situation solely from David's point of view. Second, David does not communicate his feelings to Andy, which also indicates a dysfunctionality of the intimacy in their relationship. We also see that David yields to Andy "for Andy's sake, not his own." There is a sense of finality to their sex life, as David thinks, "it might very well be their last expression like that." And, though the sex is good, "so much like the past," it yet is unalterably different, "Everything had changed." This passage traces the lifespan of their sex life, noting an earlier time of vibrant, lively sex, to how it is now different, and implies that it will soon die. This passage occurs at the end of Part One.

       When we get to Part Two, the narrative kills off the life of their sexual relationship and juxtaposes it with a heterosexual one.[38] In Chapter Eleven, we see Dr. Branch and his wife, Carolyn, having sex:

They kissed and rolled on the bed, the warm night air blowing gently across them from the open window. For a moment, Branch thought of Andy and David, of what sorrow lay in their life together. But then he felt the insistent pressure created by Carolyn's fingers, and then she was offering herself fully, pulling him in beneath her as she lay atop him and brought him in tight. He put everything out of his mind at that moment; it was the release he so desperately needed. (91)

In contrast to this passage, which describes the successful "release" a heterosexual couple achieves through sex, the next passage of the novel begins with Andy and David lying in bed, not talking:

Earlier, Andy had wanted to make love again, but this time, David had refused him, trying to mask his fear with excuses of disquiet and worry. Andy had not argued about it; he seemed somehow to understand; he had, in fact, anticipated that moment when David would cease to find Andy attractive in his illness. Somehow, it made them seem closer. (91)

Unlike the earlier sexual encounter between them, which was told from David's point of view, this moment in the narrative when their sex life dies, is told from Andy's point of view. It also directly follows Andy's diagnosis of not only KS but also of GRID (AIDS had not yet been named as such), which both he and David have taken as a death sentence. In the subsequent passage, Andy muses about his feelings for David in light of his terminal illlness:

[Andy] felt very close to David, for suddenly he seemed very precious, very much to be appreciated. Andy lay uneasily as he saw that David had fallen asleep; he was glad it was over. He realized that now the diagnosis was given, he had something to which to concede his health, his life probably. (92)

His feelings for David are overshadowed then by his feelings about death: "He disengaged his arms from David and sat up. Knowing that it would be a long time before he could sleep, he let himself out of the bedroom and made his way along the dark hall to the front room" (92).

       Indeed, as the narrative progresses, we witness another juxtaposition of the death of their sex life with the fervent heterosexual life of the Branchs. In Chapter Fifteen, we see David holding a feverishly sick Andy and thinking, "...his mind felt the real pain, as though it might explode. No, he couldn't stand it; he felt it would - if it all got worse - push him too far after all" (115). To be pushed too far would mean David would leave Andy, unable to take anymore of it. The section in the novel that immediately follows this one then reminds us of heterosexual sex: "Walt Branch, having left the hospital early to escape the heat and spent the afternoon and evening making love to a surprisingly fervid Carolyn, reclined beside her with a stiff drink" (115). Through this juxtaposition and comparison of healthy heterosexual sex with ailing, gay sex, the narrative implicitly confirms the homophobic view of gay sex as unhealthy, if not deadly.

       Toward the end of Part Two, the narrative explicitly addresses the implications of linking gay sex with AIDS. Once again, we are reminded that the sex life in Andy and David's relationship has died, though now there is an added explanation for its death:

...as Andy grew weaker and more involved in his illness, his sexual inclination was dimmed. This had been hard on David especially, for he remained vibrant and sexual, while Andy, at his own admission, had lost all interest in the activity which he held responsible for his disease. (121)

 The issue of Andy's blaming homosexuality for his illness is pursued further during conversations in which Andy repeats "mainstream" homophobic feelings about AIDS and homosexuality:

"But I can't help but wonder if it's something we did. I mean, what if I weren't gay? There are all those happy heterosexual family units all across America; they've never even heard of this thing. It's like a punishment, that's how I feel sometimes. Like God has waved his hand and said that we must pay." (125)

Andy then describes to David how people where he works and at the hospital have begun treating him like a leper. This discussion fuels David's anger, and he determines to write about the epidemic.

               Their sex life does not resurrect itself; it is dead. Instead, we see them drawing together differently. As they struggle to tell Andy's homophobic family members about his diagnosis, they draw together in a different kind of intimacy:

And so together they put their heads under the covers, neither of them able to cheer the other. But it became a slow, quiet form of strengthening for them. Together they buried their heads and slept; together they held hands and said nothing; together they began the difficult task of facing it. (100)

        By the end of the book, we find Andy still questioning his sexuality. In the last moments before he dies, he speaks with David. "'My question has boiled down to one thing,' Andy went on. 'Whether or not - if I had the chance - I would choose not to be gay'...David didn't try to stop him. He understood that for many, especially those afflicted by the disease, this question posed itself as seemingly central" (216). Andy then continues,

"But I know this: the answer to my question is that no, I wouldn't have chosen not to be gay. It has been the most compelling force...You know, David, we were there! We were at the forefront of something new, something hopeful. How many people can say that?...I wouldn't change it," he said finally. (216-7)

As in the earlier passages we've looked at, this one also contains a strange ambiguity. It pedantically asserts one thing, but the language it uses and the subsequent course of events seem to counter its assertions. Andy says he does not regret his chosen lifestyle, that it has been the most important aspect of his life, but he is now about to die.[39] There is another, more largely historical issue expressed here, which is the sense that the gay liberation movement had been a thing of value and importance ("we were on the forefront of something new, something hopeful"), but the operative words are "had been." The sexual freedom and liberation of that time is now over, because AIDS has destroyed it.[40] What we have seen in this novel is that the sexual life of a gay couple is killed by AIDS, and, perhaps more ominously, the implication that AIDS has killed the life of the gay movement. The novel offers no hope for the future of the gay movement, and, in all likelihood, David is infected by the AIDS virus, as well, so that if we are to imagine the rest of David's life, it will most likely mirror Andy's. This apocalyptic narrative would thus repeat itself in David's story, another tale of total, absolute destruction and finality. The novel reasserts the larger cultural narrative that AIDS means death for all it touches.

2.11 Facing Death

       Through the course of the novel, the feelings Andy and David have about death move toward acquiescence, toward accepting AIDS as meaning death.[41] Initially, when Dr. Branch tells Andy that he might have hepatitis, Andy is shocked and dismayed, but he expects that with rest he will recover. When the tests come back negative for hepatitis, he is at first relieved, but then he asks, "'If I don't have hepatitis, then what's wrong?'" (42). Immediately following this passage, in which Dr. Branch explains that he doesn't know exactly what is wrong with Andy and that he'll have to run more tests, the novel includes an excerpt from the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report about an outbreak of KS in homosexual men, which emphasizes death. Though Andy has yet to find out what is ailing him, the narrative informs the reader in cold medical terms exactly what Andy has and that of the 26 patients diagnosed with KS, "eight have died" (43).

       When Dr. Branch suggests to Andy and David that Andy may have KS, a kind of cancer, immediately, they are overcome with horror: "Andy's shoulders fell and there was a sharp intake of breath from David. The word 'cancer' had shot through them like a burning knife" (56). Both Andy and David equate cancer with death, and "...as Dr. Branch had explained the curious outbreak of cancer and immunodepression, Andy had experienced an alarming sense of doom" (59-60). The fear has a numbing effect on Andy: "...he had to face it - terror at the prospect of his own possible death. Strange, he told himself; he might have expected to break down and sob about it, but he felt almost numb" (64). At the end of Part One, we see Andy sit down to read a book by May Sarton, entitled A Reckoning, which he knows is about death and which he hopes might be useful. But then he wonders if he should continue reading: "He was torn between two modes: denial and preparation. He had to keep reading, had to see what it might be like. But at the same time, he wanted to forget it, to brush it aside" (66).

       In Part Two, we witness Andy's changing attitude toward death. First, when he receives his positive diagnosis of KS, we see him both angry and frightened, feeling betrayed by his body and yet terrified of what may come to pass:

He was afraid to die. Even though he had known the biopsy would prove positive, he had not yet received the death sentence - as he now thought of it - until the words were out of Dr. Branch's mouth. Now he knew; now it was certain. So, "I am to have my own death," Andy said aloud as he walked along, quoting a line from May Sarton. Now the moment was here, and the prospect of having his own death, no matter how well or poorly he might face it, terrified and infuriated him. (80)

He struggles with how will he "face it," the prospect of his death, equating cancer with mortality. 

       Toward the end of Part Two, Andy goes to see Patrick, the one other person with AIDS depicted in the novel, who is suffering from AIDS-induced dementia. As he witnesses Patrick's condition, he remembers May Sarton's words, "I am to have my own death," and his attitude toward his own mortality alters. Both Dr. Branch and David note this change:

There was - both Branch and David could detect - some subtle change in Andy's attitude. He seemed less desperate, less hopeless; there was a hint of something stiffer in his posture, and his face no longer hid an expression of fear.

   It was his dignity they witnessed, the resolute and abrupt decision on his part that morning that he would face the cancer and his death with dignity, with strength...He would not end it in madness and confusion. (131)

In the end, Andy's attitude toward his death is one of complete and total acceptance: "Tears brimmed in their eyes, but Andy would not cry. He was done with that, he was done with suffering. He wasn't sure, but he knew that he was infused with a great harmony, a consonance. He had made his armistice with the world" (217).

       The final passage of the novel plays in such a way with the ambiguity of the word "it," that life and death, AIDS and the narrative of the novel, become synonymous: "'I wouldn't change it,'" Andy says of the life he has lived. And then he thinks, "'It's all so simple, so plain,'" about his lover, as he looks up at David, who whispers the words, "'I love you.'" But Andy cannot respond: "He was ready to open his mouth and whisper the same, but something small and magnificent deep inside him had loosened itself, was growing larger, expanding, releasing itself. Andy could hear David crying, but it didn't matter. It was done" (217). In this passage, the "something small and magnificent deep inside him" that grows "larger, expanding, releasing itself" could be the virus, or it could be his life, or it could be his spirit as it moves beyond him. David's crying, signifying their relationship, no longer matters, because "it was done." Here, the "it" could stand for the entirety of Andy's life and his relationships, except that as the last line of the novel, it also signifies the closure of the novel as well. In this last passage, Andy's life becomes synonymous with the narrative of the novel, and both become synonymous with AIDS and with death. It is at this moment, the last moment, that AIDS has finally succeeded in imposing its meaning on Andy and the novel: AIDS means death and the novel dies with Andy. It is in this total and complete dying, not only of Andy but of the narrative itself, that the novel is apocalyptic: there is no redemption, there is no living beyond, there is nothing to be learned beyond death and beyond the "fact" that AIDS means death.[42]

2.12 In Retrospect

       When we stand back from the particulars of the novel and look at it as a completed whole, we begin to see several important things. First, the novel conveys the importance of writing as a way to "face" AIDS. In David's desire to put into writing and communicate his findings about AIDS, the novel contains within itself a parallel of what it as a whole wants to accomplish. David begins writing as a way to get the gay community around him to "face it," to face AIDS and the growing epidemic. Additionally, Andy ponders the phrase, "I am to have my own death," from May Sarton's book, A Reckoning, a book which helps people think about death, and which mirrors one of the purposes of Facing It, namely, getting the reader(s) to face AIDS and all of its implications for someone living and dying of it. In this respect, then, the novel serves an educative function.[43]

       There is also another level at which the novel as a whole operates. From the opening chapter, with its insistent emphasis on aging and the impermanence of both people and their constructions, through the end of the novel, with Andy's acquiescence to death, the narrative of the novel represents human time as a linear trajectory. We might call this a "journalistic" portrayal of life in time, in the sense that the novel reports events sequentially as they happen, or we could see it as the construction of a medical history, charting the important events in the history of Andy's illness. In either case, however, the narrative represents the life of a person with AIDS as a linear movement, of time running out and moving to its end, which is represented as death. AIDS means the end of time, the end of text, and the meaninglessness of death; these are the messages the novel communicates. Afterall, the only other death we encounter besides Andy's is Patrick's, which yields only a brief comment in passing. The narrative does not depict the death of either Patrick or of Andy as having consequences. The narrative takes us all the way to the moment that Andy is gone and the narrative has finished, "It is done," but we do not see what happens beyond. How has Andy's death affected David and how he lives his life? How does Dr. Branch and his wife react to the news? Because the narrative does not illustrate the effects of his death, which would convey what his death means to the people who love him, Andy's death in some sense is meaningless; it merely signifies the end of the narrative.

       Another way of looking at the novel, however, takes the points of view of the reader and the author into consideration. Though the narrative depicts a world of characters living life in time, the novel also stands outside of time. In this respect, the novel is a kind of artifact that the author has constructed, so that subsequent readers can discover and uncover its value. The novel then takes on added significance. Besides serving an educative function for the reader, the novel also refers to a historical time and its inhabitants that are no longer extant. Though Facing It is a fictional representation of a historical moment, (Reed didn't personally know anyone dying of AIDS),[44] the novel yet works to testify and bear witness to the historical experience of the early AIDS epidemic and its impact on members of the gay community. In this sense, the novel contributes to the project of constructing a history of the epidemic in its early years, a project not unlike others, such as work on the history of slavery, of the Holocaust and of Vietnam, which seek to make sense of horrible events within human history. All of these projects acknowledge the power of the equation SILENCE=DEATH and work to break the silence through a variety of means. In the case of Facing It, we see an early contribution to the gay community's efforts to document and make sense of the AIDS epidemic.

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Notes

[1]. Though Dorothy Bryant's novel, A Day in San Francisco, is the first novel to mention AIDS, Reed's novel is the first one in which AIDS plays a central role in the narrative. It is for this reason that I categorize Bryant's book as a secondary AIDS novel and Reed's as a primary AIDS novel.

[2]. Terrence McGovern's review of Paul Reed's work in the reference manual, Contemporary Gay American Novelists, provides a good overview of the critical reception to Reed's novel.

[3]. A perusal of the Annotated Bibliography illustrates this point.

2.2 The Apocalyptic AIDS Narrative

[4]. The work of literary and cultural critics, such as Susan Sontag's AIDS and its Metaphors and James W. Jone's "The Plague and Its Texts," has attempted to formulate a paradigm (what Sontag calls "metaphor" and what Jones calls "cultural narrative"), which "infects" (to borrow from Jones) so many of the cultural and artistic representations of AIDS. Where their work focuses explicitly on the representation of AIDS as a "gay plague," which has important political and social consequences, my project at first glance appears to address more private and philosophical concerns because of its focus on the problems of representing the temporality of AIDS in literature. However, as I hope to show through the course of the dissertation, it is precisely this issue over how to represent the temporality of AIDS that has had such crucial relevancy for those who are living with AIDS, and as such, is a social concern.

[5]. I am reminded here of Peter Brooks' project in Reading for the Plot, when he establishes a pattern for the plots of late 19th-century novels using what he calls Freud's "Masterplot," only to say in a passing footnote that these do not include what he calls the "female plot": "a waiting (and suffering) until the woman's desire can be a permitted response to the expression of male desire" (330). One might wonder how he would describe a non-heterosexual plot.

[6]. A classic example is Northrop Frye's The Anatomy of Criticism and his archetypal criticism that charts four basic "mythoi" as constitutive of the major literary genres.

[7]. Jeffrey Meyers 6.

[8]. Jerry Falwell and Pat Buchanan versus Larry Kramer and David Worjnarowicz are good examples of diametrically opposed, apocalyptic points of view about AIDS.

[9]. In his article, "'All the Sad Young Men,'" Jeff Nunokawa points to a long literary tradition, including Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, that figures gay men as doomed. Lee Edelman, in "The Plague of Discourse," points to the slippery figurality of AIDS, which at times may undermine people's good intentions by insidiously reiterating homophobic representations of gays.  Sodomy and apocalypse are also linked to Christianity, as Richard Dellamora writes in Apocalyptic Overtures, "the association of sex between men with end times is embedded in the political unconscious of Christian societies" (3).

[10]. Meyers 16.

[11]. A further distinction should be made between writers who are HIV+ but who are neither "healthy" nor who have full-blown AIDS, since they stand in a different relation to AIDS than these other groups.

[12]. Paul Monette, for example, has written that during the months following the death of his lover, Rog, to AIDS, "writing them  [the elegies] quite literally kept me alive, for the only time I wasn't wailing and trembling was when I was hammering at these poems" (xi).

2.3 The Apocalyptic Narrative of AIDS in the 1980's    

[13]. See Terrence McGovern's description of the critical response to Reed's novel in Contemporary Gay Novelists.

[14]. The story of how HIV was both discovered and named is a  long and sordid one, which Randy Shilts describes in detail in And the Band Played On. Throughout the 1980's and still today, there has been some controversy about the relationship between HIV and AIDS. Peter Duesberg has been a notorious figure in this debate; he continues to argue that correlation does not equal causation in the case of HIV and AIDS. 

[15]. It wasn't until 1985 and Rock Hudson's announcement that he had AIDS that the "general public" became conscious of AIDS as an issue for concern, especially with the silence of the Reagan administration and the mainstream press about the epidemic.

2.4 The Critical Reception to Facing It

[16]. The publication of Alice Hoffman's At Risk in 1988, by the mainstream publishing house Putnam's, was the first widely read (by the "general public") novel about AIDS, according to Judith Pastore in "Suburban AIDS." Who gets published and by whom is an important and difficult issue. Sharon Mayes has written in her piece, "It Can Happen," of the difficulties of finding a publisher for her novel, Immune, and in his Introduction to Brother to Brother, Essex Hemphill has written of the difficulties associated with being black and gay, having to live "through denials and abbreviated histories riddled with omissions, [by which] the middle class sets about whitewashing and fixing up the race to impress each other and the rascists who don't give a damn" (xxviii). The maturation of the electronic age, since the later 1980s and continuing today, has led to a tremendous growth in small publishing houses, including ones that serve gay and lesbian audiences, which may also help explain the growing numbers of novels about AIDS.

[17]. Interrante 6; McGovern cites this same quote in his discussion of Reed's work on page 356.

2.5 The Narrative Structure of Facing It

[18]. It is this second storyline that has received criticism for not being more smoothly integrated into the narrative structure of the novel as a whole. For an example, see Interrante's review of Facing It.

2.6 The Genre of Facing It

[19]. Other AIDS novels that utilize aspects of "medical mystery" include David Dawson's Double Blind and Sharon Mayes' Immune. The medical mystery that Andy and Dr. Branch seek to solve exposes the limits of the power of science. Thomas Yingling has noted the challenge that AIDS poses to cultural notions about the power of science:

...we have understood AIDS not only as a political crisis but also as a mystery to be solved by the power of science (understood as a pure domain of human knowledge wherein 'nature' progressively submits to the power of human intellection and technological advance). Part of what baffles about AIDS, of course, is its resistance as an illness to this scenario of empowered science... (298).

[20]. Unlike Facing It, there are a large number of novels whose narratives use memory and the past as a way to talk about AIDS. (See Annotated Bibliography for examples). Some of these novels, like Christopher Davis' Valley of the Shadow and David Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed, develop narrative strategies to evade the tendency to represent AIDS as an apocalyptic future, by focusing instead on events in the past.

[21]. Jones makes a related point in his discussion of the "infectiousness" of AIDS as a cultural narrative of plague, in his provocative essay, "The Plague and its Texts," when he writes of David Feinberg's novel, Eighty-Sixed, that "Once AIDS enters the novel, it becomes slowly a plague, transforming all it touches" (75). Here, my point is that the apocalyptic representation of the temporality of AIDS as the End is another dangerous and infectious cultural narrative.

[22]. Though many of the novels include last words spoken by survivors, AIDS still brings about the end of many of the AIDS novels. A few examples include Bo's death from AIDS in Michael Bishop's Unicorn Mountain, Tommy's suicide in Vance Bourjaily's Old Soldier, and Erich's death from AIDS in Michael Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World.

2.7 The Title: Facing It: A Novel of AIDS

[23]. I suppose there is a certain irony inherent in the structuring of my analysis of the novel, since if I follow the linear course the novel itself establishes, my own critical readings may very well mimic the apocalyptic thrust of the novel, moving from beginning to death.

[24]. "Facing it" is also exactly what the Reagan adminstration of the early 1980s and the "general public" had not done, so in another respect, Facing It has larger political and social implications, and it resonates with the other early AIDS projects to raise consciousness about AIDS, like the work of Larry Kramer, Michael Callen and David Worjnarowicz.

2.8 The Importance of the Opening Chapter

[25]. This emphasis on exact time and location is frequently used in AIDS literature. Besides Shilts' And the Band Played On, Jean Warmbold's June Mail, Geoffrey Mains' Gentle Warriors, Mayes' Immune and Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed are examples of AIDS novels that use an emphasis on time and place as a way to stimulate a sense of urgency with regards to AIDS.

2.9 Medical Realism and Facing It as "AIDS 101"

[26]. Most of the AIDS novels do not so thoroughly document the opportunistic infections their characters' suffer, though references are made in passing to various AIDS-related ailments. For example, Emma in Helen Chappel's Acts of Love has KS,  Sandra in Alejandro Morales' The Rag Doll Plagues has PCP and Josh in Michael Nava's The Hidden Law has CMV.

[27]. Teddy in Davis' The Valley of the Shadow, Clarence in Christopher Bram's In Memory of Angel Clare, and Eddie in John Weir's The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket are just a few examples of beautiful men stricken by AIDS.

[28]. The description of Bob Broome's AIDS in Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed, as well as that of Eddie's AIDS in Weir's The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, also graphically depict with clinical detail the ravages AIDS causes to the body.

[29]. In his review of Facing It, Interrante praises the novel for its accurate portrayal of the emotional issues involved with AIDS. Reed himself has said in an interview with Deb Price, "I felt... the best way to reach people was at the emotional level, to explain to them what this illness was about in a novel."

[30]. See the Annotated Bibliography for a category of AIDS novel, the science fiction/intrigue novels, that is wholly concerned with the larger issues related to the AIDS epidemic. There are also other novels, like Marty Rubin's The Boiled Frog Syndrome, that deal with political and medical paranoia about plots to imprison and destroy gay men, but which do not directly deal with the AIDS epidemic.

2.10 The Narrative "Life" of a Protagonist

[31]. Examples of friendships with other PLWAs include Peter and  Yale in Joel Redon's Bloodstream and Zero and Randy in Peter McGehee's Boys Like Us.

[32]. Another important point to note is that early in the epidemic, people died quite quickly from AIDS. As more has become known about HIV and AIDS, and as more treatments have become available, people have been able to live much longer with it. The changing life expectancy for people diagnosed with AIDS has no doubt helped alleviate some of the earlier panic about it and there has been an increased effort by people living with AIDS to educate others that they live with HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, however, the primary cultural narrative about AIDS continues to represent it as a death sentence. (The recent mainstream and widely publicized movie, Philadelphia, demonstrates the continued prevalence and popularity of representing AIDS this way).

[33]. Many of the AIDS novels describe the difficult and oftentimes strained relations between gay men and their biological families. AIDS often stretches the relations to a breaking point. Besides Facing It, Larry Duplechan's Tangled up in Blue, Robert Ferro's Second Son and Dorothy Bryant's A Day in San Francisco portray some of the difficulties experienced by gay men in their relationships with their biological families.

[34]. There are many AIDS novels that represent alternatives to the traditional, heterosexual and biological family structure. For example, in his AIDS novel Halfway Home, Monette juxtaposes a traditional family with one composed of two lovers, a lesbian and an elderly lady as a way to illustrate the pros and cons of each, and in Cunningham's A Home at the End of the World, Clara, Bobby and Jonathan set up house together.

[35]. Because of its relation to sexuality, AIDS insinuates itself into the personal lives of sexual couples, especially gay couples, and most of the AIDS novels describe the fall-out of AIDS on peoples' love lives. Examples range from Bill and Mark in Ferro's Second Son, to Sharyn and Rob in Alfred Ignegno's Shared Legacy to Stephen and Mark in Monette's Afterlife.

[36]. Many scholars of AIDS literature have noted how important bearing witness or offering "testimony" (as Timothy Murphy calls it in an article of the same name) to those who have died of AIDS. In many of the AIDS novels besides Facing It, though the narratives may serve to "testify" to the worth of the person that has died, the emphasis is on how the death affects those who remain living. Consider, for example, the effects of Clarence's death on the group of friends in Christopher Bram's In Memory of Angel Clare, Vic's death on Steven in Monette's Afterlife, and Darren's death on Amelia in Klass' Other People's Children.

[37]. Many of the AIDS novels address the troublesome connection between AIDS and gay sexuality, though some, including Oscar Moore's A Matter of Life and Sex and Daniel Curzon's The World Can Break Your Heart, are like Facing It, in their explicit consideration of AIDS as a punishment for being gay.

[38]. I am reminded here of the movie, Philadelphia, which unlike Christopher Davis' novelization of the screenplay, includes a repeated juxtaposition of a happy, heterosexual couple and their new baby, versus Andy Beckett's languishing relationship with his lover, Michael.

[39]. Several reviewers have criticized the ending as forced. For an example, Interrante writes, "I found the novel's ending a bit contrived in the interests of gay affirmation" (7).

[40]. Besides evocatively depicting how AIDS has killed the earlier times of sexual liberation, Mains' Gentle Warriors, like Facing It, depicts political activism as failing, when Gregg does not succeed in assassinating the President, because he has collapsed and died from AIDS.

2.11 Facing Death

[41]. Not all AIDS novels show characters accepting that AIDS means death, though most of the novels reach some form of acceptance. For example, BJ in Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed learns emotional acceptance and "how to cry"; Leonard in Howard Fast's The Dinner Party learns the peace of meditation, and Amelia in Klass' Other Women's Children retains her pediatrician's hope for children.

[42]. Though most of the AIDS novels do not end this abruptly, their description of the characters with AIDS generally do end with death, which implicitly confirms the cultural narrative that AIDS=death. An example of this is Weir's theThe Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket, in which (besides Eddie who dies), none of the other characters has AIDS or are HIV+ and no one else dies.

2.12 In Retrospect

[43]. Most of the AIDS novels written for young adults serve a similar educative function, though they are primarily concerned with teaching young people not to succumb to AIDSphobia. For example, Laura in Miriam Cohen's Laura Leonora's First Amendment, Karen in Martha Humphrey's Until Whatever, and Erick in M.E. Kerr's Night Kites, all learn to stand up against both the ignorance about AIDS and the AIDSphobia of their families and communities.

[44]. Subsequent to the publication of Facing It, Reed not only lost his lover and countless friends to AIDS, but found himself also infected with the virus. My source for this is an article by Deb Price, "The Broadening Literature of AIDS."

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Lisa Garmire's Home Page

Resisting the Apocalypse: Telling Time in American Novels about AIDS, 1982-1992"
(UCSB English Department Doctoral Dissertation 1996, Lisa Garmire)

• Chapter 1: AIDS Novels in Context
• Chapter 1: Works Cited
• Chapter 2: The Apocalyptic AIDS Novel: Facing It: A Novel of AIDS
• Chapter 2: Works Cited
• Chapter 3: Resisting the Apocalypse: David Feinberg's Eighty-Sixed and Spontaneous Combustion
• Chapter 3: Works Cited
• Chapter 4: Borrowing Time in Paul Monette's Afterlife and Halfway Home
• Chapter 4: Works Cited
• Chapter 5: Silent Apocalypse: Race, Class, Gender, Heterosexual AIDS
• Chapter 5: Works Cited
• Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of AIDS Novels, 1982-1992
• Selected Bibliography of AIDS Novels 1993+